JEWEL b2b (Greece/W Med) semi-live Aug24 - Sept14 REVIEW w/lots of photos

[cinnamon]

Hoopster, Brilliance tenders in Villefranche, we were there on August 30th.

The small red building above the wall behind the beach is the station. 5-10 minute walk from the tender port and easy to catch trains. East to Monaco or west towards Nice. We actually caught the train to Antibes as we had a family holiday there in the early 90s and were keen to visit again.

 

 

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[Jennywren113]

 

Pressing on we were able to stop at two photo spots fort 5 min each at Villefranche-sur-Mer.

 

In the past RCL ships have tendered here, however I don;t know if they do anymore. Shame... obviously much closer for access to Monaco, and I've read reviews that this town is beautiful for a short visit as well.

 

 

We have stopped at Villefranche whilst on Liberty in 2013 and it is a lovely little place. We spent the morning wandering the little streets followed by lunch and a beer on front and ice cream after visiting the Citadel. It's one of my all time favourite ports for perfect days.

It is only a port visited by ships with tender boats and was always part of the western med itinerary which Freedom and Liberty covered then they have changed that to Oasis class with Harmony this year and Symphony next year (Shame really).

My parents went on Anthem in 2015 and they stopped there too. Dad tells me it's one of his favourites stops ( I think it was French sunshine and ice cream which swung it for him) 😎

[Jennywren113]

We have stopped at Villefranche whilst on Liberty in 2013 and it is a lovely little place. We spent the morning wandering the little streets followed by lunch and a beer on front and ice cream after visiting the Citadel. It's one of my all time favourite ports for perfect days.

It is only a port visited by ships with tender boats and was always part of the western med itinerary which Freedom and Liberty covered then they have changed that to Oasis class with Harmony this year and Symphony next year (Shame really).

My parents went on Anthem in 2015 and they stopped there too. Dad tells me it's one of his favourites stops ( I think it was French sunshine and ice cream which swung it for him) 😎

 

Oh just seen that Cinamon has posted about Brilliance still going there. Great news for RCI cruisers.

[Shelley61]

 

Navigator OTS and Celebrity Silhouette anchored off Villefranche just 2 weeks ago! My first time there and my favourite port of the whole cruise!

 

 

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[Hoopster95]

Thank you cinnamon, Jen & Shelley... great photo Shelley!

By the way, aubrey is currently doing a Freedom review with exactly what cinnamon is talking about regarding the train.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=54194282&highlight=Villefranche#post54194282

 

Aubrey's review has excellent detail, so look into it for advice.

I checked into train times in Cannes and it's an hour there and back... just think of a broken train or delay trying to get back to the ship for that distance... don't think I would do that from Cannes. However, that is totally the way to go for a DIY day for sure from Villefranche. I wish we had docked there. Oh well.

 

One of our options was to visit closer towns to Cannes.... Grasse and St Paul de Vence (google these awesome towns).

In retrospect due to time restraints I wish we had done the above two towns, and saved Monaco for a different trip

[Hoopster95]

Day 3 - Ajaccio - Iles Des Sangiunaires, beach (La Plage Trottel) & walk around old the town

 

Last night Diego had pointed out on a hand-out he provides at various ports for suite guests, and anyone else who asks, whioch has a map of the town and his "top pick" for an excursion. He claims that he always gets rave reviews from thoe looking for beach time to take the 8euro ferry across the bay to Plage Porticcio. I had researched this area pre-cruise and thought it would be awesome to visit, but had my heart set on staying closer to the town to explore. Also on that side of the Bay is Plage D'Argent... if you're a beach goer, do google these... super easy to get to and so beautiful.

 

So that was my regret for the day... I had promised gf we would have a beach day, plus an hour or two around town to explore, but it didn't quite work out that way

 

But first on this morning on my way to bring down coffee, I had realized I hadn't taken any pics in and around the entry to the cabin... many cruisers always post and ask whether cabins close to the elevator are noisy, lots of traffic, service areas by stateroom attendant staff, etc. Here's the location of my cabin.... Standing in front of the fire doors leading into the hallway, looking out at the elevator

 

Turning left...stairwell

 

Turning left again, there we are looking into the hallway staring directly at the cabin door

 

Was it noisy? Not in the least. We barley ever heard people outside... just a couple of times in the morning, epecially on disembark day. There's the cabin door on the left, and the stateroom attendants rolly cart pushed against the wall... just to the right around the corner is the staff service room, we nbever heard them once all week.

 

And this is how close the cabin door is to the elevator lobby. I rarelky had to wait for this elevator, and rarely had anyone else in there with me. I think many like ourselves p[refered to walk down a flight of stairs or two and walk across the ship into the centrum. In the mornings I was always up these elevators then along deck 12 to head to the CL.

 

In hindsite, while we enjoyed the novelty of this room (it's great deck, ect) and it's location, we wold have prefed to stay in the cabin of our first 7 days mid-hump. That was absoilutely brilliant and one of my favorite locations I have ever stayed in.

[Hoopster95]

We had already pulled into the pier when we awoke... Going up to the CL I took a pic of the port area off the port side (Capt. Dustin pulled in facing forward)

 

From my balcony on the starboard side was the direct ferry to Olbia on Sardenia. The ferry system is awesome in these ports with many connections to/from Sardenia, Corsica, and mainland Italy/France/Spain. Locals, or us tourists with rental cars, can take our cars anywhere!

 

Port time was 7am-4pm on this day. .. all aboard at 3:30pm

 

My handy-dandy map... top left inset is all of Ajaccio and the black line along the coastline that leads to Iles Des Sanguinaires... our first place to visit for the day. Note the white arrow on the bottom right is the cruise pier... the white arrow lower left is the beach we chose to stay at: La Plage Trottel, Note the other yellow beach in the middle and closer to the ship... both of these are easy walking distance.

[Hoopster95]

Tip #1: Listen toDiego! He's been there... many times

Tip #2: If you're savvy (like I think I am most all of the time, except this morning for some reason) trust local transportation.

 

I had looked at what seemed to be very easy public transportation pre-cruise, specifically public bus to an area which is not visited by RCL, Iles Des Sanguinaires (Parata).

http://www.corsicatravelguide.com/scenerycorsica/iles-sanguinaires.php

 

Why did I want to visit this area? Here's an internet photo

 

The bus showed departures approx every 1/2 hour up the coastline to Parata and entry of the park... simple enough for 1.80 euro I believe. I thought due to our times constraints on this short port day that I would taxi out here rather than public bus... I contacted a taxi company on-line (AjaccioTaxi) and asked them that I wanted taxi service to and from Iles Des Sanguinaires rather than finding a taxi at the pier on day of port,.. would they accept that business? Sure they said. Sure enough, this morning I texted the cab company and they said no problem we'll have a car there in 5 minutes

The driver barely spoke english. I speak limited French, however he got the message that we wanted to go to Parata... I followed the signs as we headed out from the pier area and knew he was going the right way. I noticed no meter ion this "taxi". I ask how much, is it flat rate. Again, with me limited French, he replied "80 euro".... huh? I asked again to repeat... in French he said 80 euro. I asked how can that be? I was able to put together that he was providing us private car service as this is what we ordered.... at 80euro per hour!!!!!! Uh NO! I immediately texted and called the office where I had asked all the questions pre-cruise in panning this, speaking with the same gentleman I had asked for this service. Bottom line... whether or not he was legitimately confused with what I wanted or not (ie. I wanted a cab... not a private car service) this driver was not letting us out of the car without paying. I had quickly thought just before heading too far out of town to just quickly get out of the car at a stop light to force the issue, but too late... we were already on the higher speed highway towards Parata. Again... time is money, money is time... get stranded somewhere without knowing how to get back or where... or continue on and figure something out?

We decided to continue on as we were only 10min by this time, and we'd still have to pay for this initial time. We'd figure we'd take some pictures, and then order the driver to take us early than expected back to the beach for the morning... we'd pay them the one hour charge and that's it. Period. We arrived to Parata and the parking area... this is our first view

In the above picture, note the public bus stoped there and the loop ... GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Looking bck from whjere we came... there is not much to see except coastline on this drive, about 1/2 hour... walking is supposedly about 2 hours, so not something you would do from the ship. Also to this area one of those tourist "mini-trains" comes all the way out this way and let's you off for about 10minutes. The iopen ir bus comes here too but take speialc note.... this is NOT a hop-on hop-off... you stay on for the entire journey.

Here's something important I did not see when researching on-line... a 1/2 hour water tour/taxi that takes you out onto the islands to explore,.. specifically L'il Mezzu Mare (Island in the middle of the Ocean). Very inexpensive and must be beautiful to visit. Google some pictures... just beautiful.

But alas, we needed to get going in 10 minutes so to make it back to the beach and not get charged for another hour... there was no way I wanted to be even a minute later and get into that controvery... would not end well with Hoopster reporting live from a Corsican jail! So we headed back from wherre we came along the coastline and various beaches

Too bad... better planning, and especially being able to speak with someone in the know from that area, would've gone a long long way. Bye bye Iles Des Sanguinaires... sigh

[Hoopster95]

So after getting our 15 mins out at Parata, and with a very sour taste in our mouths regarding the morning so far, we had directed the driver to drop us off at Trottel Beach... no our first choice as we wished to be out at Mirabella beach... however we wished to get back within walking distance so that we didn't need to deal with transportation again for the day.

And what was there at the side of the road as we were dropped off... yep, you guessed it... the 1.80euro bus from Parata... sigh.

 

Ok.... "Let it go, Let it go..." (sing the Disney song)... yep, had to move on and enjoy the day, can't go backwards. Here we were at Trottel Beach... this is perfect for those of you who wish to have more private and exclusive space. It was relatively empty and peaceful, nice water. Be aware there is some nudity.

 

 

Having enjoyed about 2 hours here, we packed up for a town visit. we walked via the boardwalk around the corner towards town and noted that the beach closer to the ship (St. Francois) was much busier and packed... if zooming in you'd see many more people.

[Hoopster95]

I've mentioned the little tourist trains several times.... here it is. This would be the one heading out to Parata... it;'s about an hour + 15minute route. Not hop-on hop-off. This could give you an easy overview of Ajaccio and then you can walk around on your own.

 

The town is relatively small and very easy to get around with two main roads and signage everywhere... one at the coastline and another about 5 blocks up the hill inland (Cours General LeClerc)

 

By following the map I posted earlier, or google mapping, we headed straight up inland from Plage Trottel to Grote Napoleon. A very large memorial to Napoleon is to be there along with a large park area. It's on the way back from the beach regardless. Turns out it was highly uninspiring and not a must-see area at all.

 

This only held our interest for a few minutes with picture taking and looking down onto the city. Take note that from here all the way down to Place De Gaulle (at old town and close to the ship) there is nothing to see or do. This city has hardly anything geared towards tourism in comparison to other cities.

 

The historical importance here is that this granite pyramid & statue were inauygurated in 1938. The "cave of Napoleon" is supposedly here... According to legend, Napoleon often took refuge there during his childhood.

[Hoopster95]

We made our way down the main boulevard towards the port, and towards Place de Gaulle. On the block before the large square, we stopped here for lunch....

 

Great place for an inexpensive lunch or snack with great food... practice up your French at least a wee bit as not very much English was spoken here, we were able to order a couple of beers and wraps/panini's... fantastic! Fresh, delirious. Served cafeteria style, there's outside and inside seating here... take your tray to the table and enjoy

 

 

 

Recharged, bathroom break, rested... we continued on through the main square of this city... Place de Gaulle

 

[Hoopster95]

To put distance into perspective, here is the edge of Place de Gaulle with a view of the beach... that farthest edge and around the corner is where Plage de Trottel is located... I estimate a 15-20min walk... the ship is about a 10-15minute walk from here in the opposite direction for a total of about 1/2 hour'ish

 

Leaving Place de Gaulle... the 3 flags are French, Corsica and Ajaccio Coat of Arms

 

This old town is very weak in comparison to the cities we've already visited... and those we will be visiting

 

This is the rear of the Napoleon Museum... yep, this is it... doesn't look like anything at all, does it?

 

Note the distance from Jewel to the Old Town (and the Napoleon Museum)

[Hoopster95]

The Napoleon museum is extremely weak... I was confused upon entering as I asked myself "is this it"? Very poorly done in my humble opinion, but there must be reasons. There's just not a whioe lot there, and the audio guide is excruciatingly boring

 

 

 

 

These are some of my best photos.. there's really not much to see or learn here.

And the high-light of the museum? The room where napoleon is said to have been born

 

 

YAAAAAAWN... very disappointing visit. A waste of 7euro per person and about 45min of time as we whizzed through.

[Hoopster95]

The best part of our old town visit was saved for last... we headed out through Place De Gaulle and down into Place Foch, a market area with a nice garden/fountain symbolizing the area with great open air stores and kiosks.

 

Running directly in one block from the cruise pier is a pedestrian only street called Rue Cardinal Fesch. This was the best street of them all. There's various interesting cafe's and stores

 

 

This is where we stopped at a very cool open air cafe and enjoyed a well known French aperitif called Pastis, an anise-flavoured spirit

 

At this point it was about 2:30pm... all-aboard was 3:30pm but we had no need to stretch time... we were done and headed back to the ship. This doen't make any sense.... As you can see here on the first picture below there's barely anyone at all on the pier with us... hmmm, where is everybody with opnly an hour to go before all aboard???!!!

 

[Hoopster95]

My answer to the above question became crystal clear... all my fellow cruisers were on board and on pool deck!!! Seriously, there was a line-up for towels and not a lounger anywhere on any deck available. First thing that came to mind is either everyone came on board very quickly after seeing there was not much to see/do and/or the Europeans on board just just on board to enjoy the spectacular day we had weather wise... like we do here in Nassau or Falmouth.

 

After cleaning up a bit/resting/changing we opted to head out and enjoy sailaway from deck 13 forward this time around

 

Capt Dustin backed out and turned the bow west and northward to head to Barcelona. We were able to sail by the beaches we had visited and drove past in the morning, as well as get some nice shots of Iles des Sanguinaires from a distance and then closer up as well. We enjoyed the remainder of sailaway from our balcony

 

[Hoopster95]

A decision was made to put the iphone and camera away for the evening as this would likely be uneventful anyways... and it was. We had no dinner plans, we were planning to not see "City of Dreams" again, and there were no must see/do games shows or trivia this evening that interested us.

 

I will say, however, that our plan for this evening was to enjoy the CL and our fellow cruisers up there a little longer this evening (this is where I learned of the other couple with the driver who went out of town to various areas... they had a wonderful day in Corsica). We also gave our feedback about what we did to Diego. We stayed quite late (8;30'ish) with the intention to go to the WJ this evening. This was another disappointment.... after some great dinners in specialty and MTD the first 9 days aboard, we grabbed our food... it was for the most part tasteless and cool. We quickly decided to leave the table and try MTD unannounced. I was worried as I thought this would be a wait with no reservation, however we were seated almost right away thankfully.

 

And here's an interesting opinion on MDR/MTD... for the life of me I cannot remember the menu nor what I ate on this evening! I'm pretty sure it was the Indian menu as tomorrow we had the Italian menu ... I remember being thankful having a decent but I just can't remember the actual dishes... unmemorable.... unlike the dinners and personal service at the specialties so far for example.

 

Dinner over by about 10, we enjoyed watching the Dancing with the Stripes Game Show, but decided to skip the White Party up at pool deck at 11:30pm... we were getting quite tired with the busy port days and wanted to be fresh for Barcelona the next day.

 

 

 

[Hoopster95]

Day 4 - Barcelona: 1/2 day city tour to Park Guell, DIY Gothic Quarter & Las Ramblas area

 

There are a million things to do and places to see in Barcelona... there is no way whatsoever anyone can possibly say they've "seen" Barcelona on a single port stop. Barcelona is truly a world class destination deserved of at least 3-4 day visit... and even then there's no way to see everything this city has to offer. My gf had never been, so studying up on what to do pre-cruise she picked the Gothic Qtr and Park Guell as the two top attractions to see on this day, and we set up our visit in that fashion.

 

Arrival

 

The port area is very industrial, however entering into the channel we had a clear view on Montjuic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montju%C3%AFc

and the castle/buildings in the distance

 

The pier area of the port is no where close to the port entry of the city.. it's pretty much mandatory to grab a local bus from the terminal to the port bus loop. I did witness a few people walking through the port area, over the bridge, etc... however this is a good 45min-1 hour walk... each way! that's a waste of about 2 hours of a port stop day. Port bus shuttles are 5 euro return sold just in the terminal before heading outside

 

 

 

We had booked a half day tour with SpainDayTours. They adjusted for our port time of 10am arrival which was great. This was advertised as a 4-4.5 hour tour... great for us as we can get dropped off around 3pm and still have a ton of time prior to our 7:30pm all aboard. There were only 9 of us in the mini-van, and we were the last couple to be picked up as they picked up the others from ships around the port area! We did not need to take the city shuttle... tour buses can come right in to the port area. We were soon on our way.

[Hoopster95]

1st stop on this city tour was Montjuic... well, it wasn't much of a "stop". The next time I visit Barcelona I'll definitely want to spend more time up here going through the Gardens, the castle, the Olympic village... lots to do here, including the great views to be had on the gondolas. On this tour all we had to start was drive bys, past the Olympic Stadium and various areas, until we reached the National Art Museum of Catalunya

 

The views out to the city here are stupendous!

Note the tiered fountains in front and the "Magic Fountain" down below... google this area for night time shots. The fountain performances are amazing... here's just one example (there are many)

 

 

We only got 10min to spend up here to enjoy the view and then we had to make our way down for the rest of the tour.

 

 

[Hoopster95]

For those of you who have never been to Barcelona, there is some crazy architecture all over the city seems

 

 

 

Antoni Gaudi is the most famous for sure with very famous buildings in various forms.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=gaudi+buildings+in+barcelona&rlz=1C1RNVH_enCA559CA585&oq=gaudi+buildings+in+barcelona&aqs=chrome.0.0l6.5917j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

One of his more well known is La Pedrera.

 

We were able to stop here and have a visit on the outside, with the guide being able to talk about the history of Gaudi and his work

 

Plenty of lines at all of these buildings! This requires some pre-planning and/or on-line tickets. Tickets are timed so you must show up during your scheduled entry. Likely the best way if you;re on a time constraint is to book a full day "Gaudi" tour which would skip the line in the various buildings with a professional guide.

[Hoopster95]

Undoubtedly the most famous building in all of Barcelona is Gaudi's own "La Sagrada Familia"

 

Most people either love or hate this building... seems to be a mish-mash of so many different structures and themes all over the place... the biggest issue it seems with most travelers I've spoken to is that it is always so ugly and always under construction. Here you can see the enormity of the construction

 

If you plan an interior visit, an on-line reservation long before you travel here is a must. Line-ups are easily a couple of hours long. There is also an option to climb the tower(s)... from what I understand this is only available with a booked tour guide so plan accordingly. I saw several people looking down to street level from a few areas and thought that would be incredible to be up close at that level

 

There were a ton of workmen on the structure and a beehive of activity... the plan is to finally finish this building by Gaudi's 100th year anniversary of beginning this project in 1826... so 9 years from now in 2026! Very ambitious if you ask me. If they do finish in time I feel that cruises and travel to Barcelona will be extremely expensive and at a premium with the amount of people wishing to visit the finished structure.

[Hoopster95]

Once the driving portion of the tour was done, we arrived at Gaudi's Park Guell where we were able to spend approx 2 hours of time both with the guide and a little bit on our own.

 

The park is very large and worth more than a couple of hours, we felt rushed a bit, but still was interesting. Wow, Gaudi certainly was a weird guy!

 

 

There's interesting area everywhere here, extremely whimsicle and a very expansive park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_G%C3%BCell

 

 

And like the Sagrada Familia, there's quite a bit of construction here too

[Hoopster95]

Our tour guide offered everyone on the bus a map of various restaurants to stop at if we wanted. While the intention was to take us all back to the port area if we wanted, most everyone was asking about being dropped off in other areas. One couple was dropped off back at La Pedrera with entry tickets for example. We opted to stop just a couple blocks up from the very central Plaza Catalunya (top of Las Ramblas) as the guide mentioned the was an awesome place for tapas (#5 on the map at the top)

 

The building is inset from the main street so it doesn't look like anything but an alley way, however once walking through the alley way a courtyard emerged with the front of the building

 

This place is awesome!!!! It's much like a food court with several restaurants/eateries

 

The food choices are fantastic... you can do a sit down lunch or sit at a bar. We opted for the bar with tapas menu.

Awesome food. An excellent stop for a meal and break from site-seeing

 

 

[Hoopster95]

Lunch finished, we began our DIY walk by making our way down Paceig de Gracia (a direct path to the Gothic Quarter) through Plaza Cataluna

https://www.google.ca/maps/place/El+Nacional/@41.3891121,2.1724138,16.25z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xaec7b1e0ea06b75!8m2!3d41.3905396!4d2.1682921

 

 

At the top of Las Ramblas, directly across from Plaza Catalunya, a memorial to those who had perished from the loser (aka terrorist) attack a couple of weeks back.

 

Continuing our way through the beautiful streets of Barcelona

 

Like Rome, in the old parts of town there are several beuatiful water fountains

 

Easy signage everywhere to find your way

[Hoopster95]

The Gothic Quarter is a relatively small(ish) 2-3 block square area comprising predominantly of the Cathedral, it's museum and the surrounding buildings.

 

The Cathedral itself is gorgeous, world-class and a must visit if you're walking you're way around Barcelona. There is a ton of important history in this cathedral which also holds the seat for the Archbishop of Barcelona.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_Cathedral

 

 

 

I wish I had read more about this cathedral before visiting as there's a lot of facts that now when I look back on my pictures now makes sense. The rooftop is very cool and known notable for its gargoyles featuring a wide range of animals, both domestic and mythical. From here there's great views (Sagrada Familia to the right in the distance)

And the port area (Jewel on the right) zoomed in

[Hoopster95]

This area is simply beautiful to stroll through all the small streets. Like Park Guell, very easily can go into the museum and spend more time in the Cathedral... a good half-day would've been great however we spent maybe 1 1/2 hours total.

There's plenty of art and history here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Quarter,_Barcelona

 

 

 

Placa Sant Jaume

 

Hungry or thirsty? Plenty of awesome cafes/pastry/deli/gelato places to stop and drool over!

 

This was likely our favorite part of the day, just strolling through and discovering this Gothic Quarter